VILLA D’ESTE TIVOLI

VILLA D’ESTE TIVOLI TOUR

VILLA D’ESTE – CASTLE OF POPE PIUS II

Every day (about 4 hours)

with PRIVATE GUIDE

Villa D’Este Tivoli

Tivoli Fountains Villa D’Este

Villa D’Este Tivoli can begin this tour from Rome or directly from Tivoli, departing from Rome we drive the highway A 24 and we arrive in the valley of Tivoli where the famous quarries of Travertine are still active.

Going along the Tiburtina road we reach the town and its central Garibaldi square. Nearby, we can admire the Castle of Pope Pius II.

A few metres far from there we enter the Villa D’Este Tivoli, residence of Cardinal Ippolito II Este, son of Lucrezia Borgia. The residence, decorated with XVI century frescoes, is famous because of its fountains working with the natural pressure of the water.

Villa d’Este is a 16th-century villa in Tivoli, near Rome, famous for its terraced hillside Italian Renaissance garden and especially for its profusion of fountains. It is now an Italian state museum, and is listed as a UNESCO world heritage site.

The fame and glory of the Villa d’Este Tivoli, was above all established by its extraordinary system of fountains; fifty-one fountains and nymphaeums, 398 spouts, 364 water jets, 64 waterfalls, and 220 basins, fed by 875 meters of canals, channels and cascades, and all working entirely by the force of gravity, without pumps.

Pirro Ligorio, who was responsible for the iconographic programs worked out in the villa’s frescos, was also commissioned to lay out the gardens for the villa, with the assistance of Tommaso Chiruchi of Bologna, one of the most skilled hydraulic engineers of the sixteenth century; Chiruchi had worked on the fountains at Villa Lante. At Villa d’Este he was assisted in the technical designs for the fountains by a Frenchman, Claude Venard, who was a manufacturer of hydraulic organs.

This garden is now part of the Grandi Giardini Italiani.

You will can continue edging the Castle “Rocca Pia” built by Pope Pius II in 1461.